Individuals who are curious about the Eat Stop Eat plan often ask whether it’s possible to gain weight while fasting.

The answer is yes.

Fasting is not magic, although it is a very effective way to create a calorie deficit and lose body fat.

Let’s say you’ve been gaining weight for the last couple months, and, through several scientific methods, we determined that you have been overeating by about 30%, which means you’re eating 30% more calories than you actually need to maintain your weight.

Because you’ve been gaining weight, you decide that it’s finally time to try the “Eat Stop Eat” diet that everyone else is talking about.

You fast twice a week, every week, for seven weeks – but in the end, you learn that you gained two pounds.

How could this be? Is Brad Pilon a liar? Is it a waste of time to fast? Is your metabolism ruined?

The answer is probably very simple.

The fasting might have actually worked incredibly well for you. The two fasts per week might have reduced the amount of calories you consume in a week by 22%. That’s a big drop, but it just isn’t enough.

If you had been overeating by 30%, a 22% decrease still means you’re eating about 8% more than you need to eat.

Fasting won’t work magic for you. The need to eat responsibly remains. You don’t have to avoid sugar or dairy products. You don’t even need to eat healthy (although it’s good to get a good variety of foods). In order to lose weight, you simply need to eat less.

Small changes are important.

Examine your diet and find small changes you could make that will cause big results. A few small changes should get you back into a caloric deficit and help you drop pounds.

It’s very easy to overeat. Some people overeat by thousands of calories every day. If fasting isn’t getting you the results you want, try studying the way you eat when you’re not fasting.

1) the people who have the easiest fasts are the ones who know they are doing something good for their bodies. If you start worrying
that fasting is somehow ‘bad’ for you, your fasts are going to be difficult.

2) Fasting becomes even easier when you realize that the point of Eat Stop Eat isn’t to give you permission to NOT eat..it’s
actually to give you FREEDOM to EAT…that’s how balance works

Here’s a quick ‘thought for the day’ to help you with your weight loss goals:

We don’t help cocaine addicts by teaching them about the metabolism of serotonin-norepinephrine-dopamine re-uptake inhibitors or the hormonal implications of cocaine use, yet we try and help people lose weight by teaching them about hormones, metabolic pathways and
glucose chemistry.

While learning about the science of weight loss is fun and interesting, the most important part of any weight loss plan is dealing with our habits, environment, perceptions and stressors.

With this being said, the most important part of Eat Stop Eat isn’t the effect on growth hormone or insulin, but rather what you learn during the 24 hours that you are fasting.

Concentrate on using this time to figure out which of your habits, environmental factors, and perceptions are contributing to how much you eat.

Basically – pay attention to what drives you to eat.

Sure you’ll lose weight by fasting, but if you also use your fasts to help improve the way you eat when you are eating, then you’re setting yourself up for long term success.

(Eat Stop Eat does a good job of telling you how and why NOT to eat, but still leaves the ‘how to eat’ part a little lacking)

Now, I’ve been trying to write the Eat portion of Eat stop Eat for years, with limited success.

It’s a broad, broad area of research, and I was going at it from a ‘prove it through science’ approach, rather than a ‘use common sense and logic approach’, which in retrospect would have been a lot better.

Luckily, John Barban has written a book called “The Anything Goes Diet” and I’ll be honest- I’m actually jealous…I kinda wish I wrote this one.

Some diet gurus will tell you that not eating enough food will actually cause you to store more fat. They will also tell you that, in order to lose weight, you must keep eating. More specifically, they’ll tell you that you must keep eating their special foods.

Confusing messages like these lead many to obsessive compulsive eating habits.

These so-called professionals base their arguments on the theory of “starvation mode.” During starvation mode, the body supposedly slows its metabolism production during times when too few calories are being ingested.

Research has shown, however, that individuals can actually eat very few calories for extended periods of time with no change in their metabolism and no decrease in muscle mass – as long as a resistance training routine is maintained. (I cover a large part of this research in Eat Stop Eat).

Significant amounts of weight can be lost on a low-calorie diet without losing muscle mass or damaging metabolism levels if resistance exercise is incorporated into your weight loss plan.

In a recent study published in the Journal of Obesity, researchers examined the effects of 25-pound weight losses by 94 women. These women followed 800-calorie-per-day diets for up to five months. A portion of the women also followed a resistance training workout program, another portion followed an aerobic training program, and a third portion did not exercise at all.

The researchers found that the women who were following the resistance training workout program maintained their Fat Free Mass during the time they were on the diet. This means that even though they lost 25 pounds they were able to preserve their muscle mass. Therefore all 25 pounds that these women lost was fat!

They also found the group of women who were following the resistance training workout program preserved their metabolic rate. In other words they did not see any metabolic “slow down” as a result of losing 25 pounds, or from being on a 800 Calorie per day diet for 5 months!

On the contrary, both the women who performed aerobic training and those who did not exercise at all during the course of their 800-calorie diet actually lost muscle mass.

More evidence that resistance training while following a weight reducing diet program can preserve lean mass and metabolic rate.

The Eat Stop Eat lifestyle, which combines flexible intermittent fasting with resistance training, can help you lose pounds without losing muscle mass or lowering your metabolism.